Change is a frivolous word. Presidential candidates all declare themselves for change. Every one is for their own version of change. Even George Bush concedes that if he were running for office again he would advocate change! So, what needs to be changed? There’s a word for what the American public wants to change. That word also sounds a bit frivolous, but let me make a case for that need and the word I have chosen to describe it. The word is spirit!

I know, I know, spirit is a word with lots of baggage. It is most often used in a religious context where it may have integrity, but where it also refers to things we have no way to know or prove. Spiritualism leaves the word in the realm of unreality. But spirit is a word that stands alone apart from religion and apart from spirits and ghosts and other sources of mystical enthusiasm. Spirit has an application to the quality of our everyday life. It does refer to what is not visible and measurable, but at the same time, it is a word that describes a very real dimension of life.

Spirit has to do with what we are motivated to do or not do. Spirit has to do not just with our thoughts and actions, but the energy we give to those thoughts and actions. Spirit might be thought of as motivational energy. It is the energy derived from an internal vision, a story, really, of who we are and who we intend to be not only as individuals, but also collectively. We sing the national anthem and the story of America comes alive in some very spiritual way within us. It affects us personally and it gives a spiritual reality to the social compact we know as our nation.

Recently, what might be called American spirit has been hammered. Perhaps that hammering has roots in the election of George Bush by the Supreme Court or in the foolish gerrymandering of Texas congressional districts. It has been painfully bruised by a poorly thought-out rush to war and a continuing dishonesty about the cost and conduct of that war. Internationally, the American spirit has suffered. But more than the governmental sector of American life finds itself in spiritual decline. The business world contributes to the self-serving spirit. Bank lending policies reflect too little respect for the common good. Even the church that lays claim to ethical standards cannot speak clearly concerning unethical clergy, and too many churches, whose business is faith, rush to replace that faith with divisive certainties. The human spirit has been assaulted on many fronts.

Change, then, has become the cry of the present campaign. But what we really seek needs a different, a sometime ill-used word, spirit. We are concerned about what we might better call, (in a nonreligious way), the spiritual climate of the nation. It is that spiritual climate that needs to change. Americans wonder how to change the invisible destructive spirit that turns our nation’s capital into a kingdom of the self-serving.

Who, they wonder, can stand up to corporations and banks and churches and other national institution that seem to be infected with distorted spirit? They want change. They want reasonable service to reasonable people. They want a new spirit in the way American life is conducted.

The mechanics of affecting change have nothing to do with the issue. Political mechanics of change, however successful, which operate within a system that mocks honesty and truth, do not deliver the change that we seek. The change we seek is greater than the skill of working the system.

Candidates string together powerful words that revolve around change but they miss the point. Spirit is renewed only when the words they use tell a story, a story, a vision, of who we are and who we intend to be. The change we seek, change of spirit, arises out of such a story. Can we find a leader who has the capacity to plant a new story in the halls of power, a story that gives rise to a renewal of national spirit? The change we seek has to do with a word we don’t seem to understand. The word may have been hijacked by religion, but, in spite of that, defines a very real dimension of our lives. We seek a new national spirit.